The highest-tech steering wheel .

Hop into a modern car and you’ll find a steering wheel studded with buttons and switches, controls for a myriad of functions. There’s one for audio volume, another for radio station switching, yet another for cruise control, some for lane-keeping assist and blind-spot monitoring, others to display various internal functions, like fuel consumption or outside temperature.

Complicated as it all might seem, it has nothing on the steering wheel of a Formula One racing car.

In a fascinating piece from Wired, forwarded by Silicon Valley correspondent C. John Friesman, we learn that the steering wheel in these high-speed cars is the complete nerve center for the driver. On some wheels, there may be 35 or more switches and buttons. They control everything from ignition timing to brake balancing to pit-lane speed limits (62 miles an hour). Not to mention the paddle shifters behind the wheel — a driver can change gears thousands of times in a race.